Demigod before 35 (Aldebaran)

Training Training Logs
281

Here are some deadlifts from my last gym session before it closed:

I never really know what to think. Low back felt really good afterwards. A tiny bit achy but I had not deadlifted in ages so yeah. Always feel, like at the video like there is movement down there but I felt fine.

Anyway, now, everything is quarantined. I am lucky to have a barbell (around 10kgs) and around 55 kgs of weight so I can train. Here is monday’s training (yeah, I didn’t post anything, I don’t know, feels like when you do less, you want to do less right?)

A. Staggered-stance RDL 2 x 10 per leg with 50 kgs

B. Meadows rows (2 secs contraction) 2 x 12 per arm with 35kgs

C. Barbell face-pulls (2 secs contraction) 2 x 15 with 20 kgs

D. Fat gripz curls (slow eccentric) 2 x 10 with 30 kgs

E. Muscle snatches 30kgs + 10 kgs Med ball slam 4 x 10 + 10 with 40 secs rest

So the trick is to find exercises that still challenge me with low weight. I tried doing single leg RDL but nope I really have horrible balance and nothing to hold to in the yeard. Still, did them with a slow tempo, and it really worked nice. Saw some girls doing these and tried. Damn! Really good sensations! Went easy there since I’ve never done these, but really great hammies sensations and my low back was fried afterwards.

The meadows and “landmine” exercises will take some time getting the groove and right weight, but I felt it nice. Facepulls easy

The muscles snatches though I would’nt think would be this much cardio ahah!

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282

So here’s my schedule:

Morning: walking the dog for around 30 mins + 20 min home cycling

Afternoon: training + 20 min cycling or rowing

Meals:

  1. Omelett with 3 eggs + vegetables + 1 slice of lean ham + 1 tiny bit of cheese

  2. 1 chicken thigh + vegetables + a bit of light ketchup

  3. 50gr of oats + whey + frozen fruits

  4. 250 gr of lean meat + vegetables + butternut or some other carb

  5. Whey + 1 little piece of lean meat + 1 fruit or vegetable

Maybe around 2000 cals? It’s only the third day I have started this. The days before I ate a bit more. Going low on cals because I’m not moving as much because of the quarantine obv. This morning my weight was 85.1 kgs. I’m think 4-5 more to go. Don’t need to be contest ready.

Here’s a pic from like 30 mins ago. So around 4 kgs lighter

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The Best Damn Home Program - Day 2

A. Zombie squat + Front squat + Back squat 1 x 8 + max + max with 70 kgs

B. Front squat with 3 pauses during eccentric 2 x 5 with 70 kgs

C. Floor press (slow eccentric) 2 x 10 with 70 kgs

D. Front raises 2 x 10 with 20 kgs

E. Wall triceps extension 3 x 10

F. Wall ball 4 x 15 with 30 secs rest

Yeah no the first stuff is something I had already done but NOPE. I’m not ready to suffer that much here. i could barely breathe. At elast it really fatigued my legs for the stuff afterwards.

Cut open my elbow during floor press because I put the bar in position like an idiot lol

Good workout, my legs didn’t want to come back for more

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The Best Damn Home Program - Day 3

A. Good mornings (slow eccentric) 2 x 10 with 60 kgs

B. One arm barbell rows

C. Russian shrugs + shrugs with 70 kgs

D. Reverse-grip curls 2 x 10 with 24 kgs

E. High-pulls 4 x 10 with 50 kgs with 40 secs rest

The Rows were messy. At 40 kgs the barbell would float away and not stay in a landmine position. So I dropped down to 35 and tried to make the reps harder.

I still fucking hate good mornings without a safety bar

First time I’m using straight bar for curls in a loooong time. Felt good and bad at the same time (tendonitis a few months ago) but these exercises are selected precisely in that regard

The high pulls really sucked and were really hard

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The Best Damn Home Program - Day 4

A. Lunges long stride + lunges short stride + squat 2 x 12 + 12 + 15 with 50 kgs

B. Military press + floor press 2 x 10 + max with 55 kgs

C. Push-ups 3 x 15

D. French press (slow eccentric) 2 x 12 with 25 kgs

E. Thrusters 4 x 10 with 40 kgs with 40 secs rest

Once again, I knew the first exercise. Hate it a lot. Burned like hell. Almost wanted to cry. My mother and sister are a bit shocked by the intensity I go through. I’ll have to increase the weight next time though…

The push-ups were tough after the drop sets. I could really feel and focus on my chest. This is great. Used to be impossible to feel something else than my arms.

I still hate thrusters with a passion

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I admire your ability to suffer.

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Well I try to, because I’ve been training for quite some time and if I don’t, I won’t progress.

Then, I feel I could go harder on the legs still. I need a press or a hack squat

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The Best Damn Home Program - Day 5

A. One leg glute bridge 2 x 10 per leg with 60 kgs

B. Pendlay rows (2 secs contraction) 2 x max with 70 kgs

C. Behind the body shrugs (2 secs contraction) 2 x max with 70kgs

D. Barbell concentration curls + curls 2 x 10 + max with 30 kgs

E. Abzzzz

Had poor feelings with the bridges, didn’t like it at all. And then that night I had some pain behind my right knee so I couldn’t sleep and barely did, and since I have a cold and my nose is running stop ughhhh
I’ll try something else next time

For the rows I think I went to around 13 reps, trying to focus on the lats, and stopping when they were exhausted instead of repping more with the arms. But I’ve never really liked these

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The Best Damn Home Program - Day 6

A. Reverse lunges 2 x 10 per leg with 60 kgs

B. Behind the neck press + Military press + Push press 2 x 10 + max + max with 50 kgs

C. Slow eccentric and concentric push-ups 2 x max

D. Skullcrushers 2 x 10-12 with 30 kgs

E. Abs

Didn’t go crazy with the lunges but they were still hard, and challenging for my core. I’m just trying to get better at these rather than destroying my quads. Really good soreness afterwards.

The press drop set is a staple. By the time I’ve done the 10 BTN I barely have energy to do like 4-5 presses and 1-3 push press. I recommend trying

I never do skullcrushers, and never with a straight bar but this I can’t get picky now. Honestly? Good triceps sensations and I suck at those. Nice!

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290

I’m confused by this:

Aren’t Pendlay Rows done with a wider grip and elbows wide/high? There’s a chance I could be doing them differently. I actually did them tonight in lieu of Meadows Rows.

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Well I think I use the same grip, but is a bit wide. The Pendlays are just done woth the torso parallel to the floor and woth a dead stop. I just did thesr because they are harder, and I tried to focus my attention only on the lats

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I’m hating pull ups so I might double up on rows and just change my grip and arm path. Good to be reminded that rows can hit the lats.

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Yes indeed. My fav for lats are the traditional low cable row with the narrow neutral grip handle. Best cue to feel them is to pull with the elbows, and down and inside you. Change things a mot even on regular bb rows

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If you’re thinking pullups for back width, have you considered straight arm pulldowns? I was supersetting them with lat pulldowns to good effect before Le Covid.

Also, too, CT has a nice four-count horizontal seated row that I fell in love with. It really emphasizes the “holding” aspect of lats/pulling strength. In essence, you start with your regular pull, hold the position and lean back a bit, hold the position and lean forward to normal posture, then slowly release into the stretch.

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So nothing changes much since. Using heavier weight this week. Have replaced:
• One of the traps exercises with pull-over using plates. Not perfect but decent feeling and stretch
• The legs mechanical drop set of hell with Bulgarian split squats: not in the mood for such pain really. Not used to BSS. They ARE challenging and really good sensations and burn, doing them slow and deep

I find it hard to stay motivated everyday. Can’t go as intense as I sued to every day or on every exercise. I am acclimated to the exercises now so the feelings aren’t as great. But there’s only so many exercises and technique you can do. I might be doing a bit more volume then

Ate a bit of shit these past 3 days but nothing too bad (appart from 3 days ago a whole chocolate tablet for dessert, so 1200 calories) but I’m at 84,5 kgs this morning. Slowly losing weight. getting back on the train of better eating. Since really I can’t train as I would want to, hard as, I must keep pushing in the leaner direction

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Definitely know what you mean: with home gyms, sometimes the only options for progression are volume- and/or intensity-based.

That’s working ok for me so far since I’ve wanted to do an intensity based program for awhile. But it’s never great to have your options limited. Hope you’re hanging in there.

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297

Yeah still training 5 times a week. I’ll probably switch to 4 full body and do some cardio on the other days, I have to prepare for some conditioning event.

Mostly not coping well with the breakup. As days pass I feel worse, most likely it affects my sleep, barely sleep even with pills, and as such my mood is down as well and that’s a vicious cycle

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hey @aldebaran

I feel like I have been through both of the situations you mentioned, so I’ll offer my perspective.

I’ll address the first part, wanting to text your ex, with the premise that I have no information about what your relationship was like, or what she is like.

And that’s okay, because the issue you raised is probably about you, not her. I don’t know how long ago the two of you broke up.

If it hasn’t been long, then I’d say that in most cases it’s normal to miss her, especially if your relationship with her was long-term and a very important part of your life.

Otherwise, you need to ask yourself what exaclty it is that you’re missing about her. Introspection can be key to moving on and getting closure with something that doesn’t belong in your life anymore.

For me, it was mainly two things:

  1. I kept thinking about what I had screwed up and how I could’ve acted differently, possibly resulting in my relationship not ending. I kept blaming myself, because I thought back of those times and I felt like I was the one who, day by day, slowly ruined my own relationship. In that instance, I wasn’t missing my gf as much as I was missing those times in which I hadn’t yet had to face the fact that the one who took her away from me was, well, me.

  2. I was scared that “I wouldn’t find another girl,” and, that if I did find one, “she wouldn’t have had [insert trait here], unlike my ex”. In short, I was afraid I would never find any better. And I had this exact feeling as each of my relationship ended. And every time, I ended up finding better, on top of becoming a better person myself. It’s okay to be worried about the future, but remember that as you’re worrying, the future doesn’t exist yet. You’re spoiling your present for something that doesn’t exist yet, and might never come to existence the way you’re imagining it in your head right now. If now I think about all the times I cried and spent sleepless nights thinking about how I had screwed myself over, it feels like a very distant memory and I realize maybe I shouldn’t have worried that much.

But I didn’t just worry. I acted. Figure out what you did wrong in your relationship, and use that as fuel to become a better person for the next one that’ll come.

If you text her now just to act on that feeling of sadness and nostalgia you have right now, you’ll be a slave acting due to fear. You might get her back (depends on a lot of things like why you broke up), but it’ll only serve to make things worse when you eventually break up again (might not happen, but it might also happen) and in the meantime you haven’t fixed yourself and only got even more attached to the ideal of your relationship with her that you have in your mind.

tl;dr: make yourself a better person. See a therapist if needed (it helped me). Fix those traits about yourself you know are toxic. Chances are the person you were with had nothing special, but rather you’re now idealizing the relationship with her and it’s making you feel like you are absolutely missing something. Most likely, what you’re missing can be found within yourself and not another person.

As per the sleep problem: melatonin didn’t help me either. 5-htp didn’t either, nor did glycine. After almost three years of dealing with anxiety-related sleep problems, I went to a psychiatrist and got a prescription for benzodiazepines. Arguably, not the most optimal path, but I tried lots of things and none worked consistently.

I’m not necessarily suggesting you start taking meds right away; it might be a temporary problem. Here’s something else that I found effective at dealing with the anxiety that came with not being able to sleep (which in turn also helped with falling asleep), which sometimes proved more effective than the meds themselves:

Focus on being okay with not sleeping. Pay attention to how you feel the next day? Can you function normally even with only a few hours of sleep? Most likely, you’ll find the answer is yes. Use this notion to remind yourself, whenever you’re lying in bed unable to sleep, that this is only temporary. You’ll eventually wake up to a new day and you’ll go about your life normally. When you eventually start catching yourself tired during the day, power through. Finish what you’re doing. If you can get a nap during the afternoon without detriment to your tasks for the day, all the better. Teach your body to deal with the fact that, even if you get a few less hours of sleep, you’re gonna be alright.

Pay attention to the thoughts that keep you up at night, analyze them but don’t get dragged in emotionally. Then focus your attention on what you’re going to do the next day. Have a goal and figure out how you’re going to achieve it. Stay positive no matter what. The feeling of not being able to fall asleep is rough the first nights, but you’ll eventually get used to it. That way, you’ll break out of the vicious cycle in which you’re afraid of not sleeping, and as a result anxiety arises and you actually can’t sleep. You’ll become more comfortable with that feeling and eventually you’ll learn how to deal with it and fall asleep anyway.

This is all I can recommend without any additional info. Disclaimer: most of what I wrote stems from my own experience with similar problems. Your mileage may vary. I’ll be happy to offer some more of my perspective if you have more questions.

Good luck.

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Yes all you say is very mature and makes a lot of sense.

Yes, it’s normal that I miss her, I know. It’s only been 3 weeks. But I thought, after having suffered so much last year, I wouldn’t get hit that hard this time. Like more resilient, but no. Of course I’m feeling a mix of both things you say.

Well you left me (I’m abridging) because she is a very driven person. She wanted us to move together real fast, buy a house afterwards etc. And truth is my work situation is terrible (earning around 1150€ per month). I was actually about to quit my job for something way better 2 days before the quarantine though. Anyway, I don’t have a lot of money, and she earned well her life. I spent too much time trying to kick my butt, and not acting to turn things around. I can see that i was not being perceived as ambitious, or active or something. She said a few months ago that she didn’t want to have a hard time with the flat knowing that me, doing my expensive “formation”, would have very little money and time left starting september. Also she spent a week here during quarantine, and that it felt like our trip to Rome: not enough sparks between us, that she was living next to me, not with me. Granted the quarantine is a hard time for me morally. So sure she had her doubts over time and that’s why she left. She was unsure about our future and it would hurt us. Sure she said she knew she was losing, and it was making her mad and sad. That she cares about me blabla.

Anyway obviously I am mad about myself. Sure I’ve seen the world but I’m 29 and spent too much time doing nothing. How am I still at this shitty job at this age. I regret not continuing my studies, not being driven enough, and ending up here: shitty job, left by my gf, living at mom’s for a good year and a half again apparently, because there is no way I’m taking a flat by my own.
I know that I could have done more in terms of kicking my ass while we were together, and taking more care of her. So of course I have regret and pain.

As for you second point yeah I relate a bit. Actually I had met this girl for a job interview like 2-3 years ago (she’s in HR) and in the gym as well. And man she is scalding hot, and beautiful. I was in awe. Never thought I could have a girl like this. Then I got her. She’s funny, exuberant, kind and loving. She’s smart and got her master degree as soon as one can, is driven, ambitious, have a good salary, and the sex was the best of my life (hers as well lol she had terrible exes) She changed me. She couldn’t get enough of me, a little glue, and I never spent time like that with anyone. For 6 months we saw each other and slep together every day. EVERY DAY (well perhaps not for 5-6 days). And I’m a loner, but I couldn’t get enough of her either. Plus, two things that weren’t met in my previous relationships: we would actually train together at the gym and having fun, and her family loves me. I spent a great deal of time with them, since I was sleeping at her house 4 times a week, plus the rest of her family I would see a lot. They are golden people, like her mother, like a week after we got together, skip her work to drive me 150 kms away to an exam because my car had broken down. And I had not asked anything.

So yeah, that doesn’t mean I could not get again a girl like that, or better some day, but she was checking all my boxes, and really these kinds of girls are rare. So I feel terrible, to have failed my shot with like, the dream. I have thrown away the dream girl.

Well I know there is no point to texting her and that we wouldn’t get back 95% no way. I just miss her so much. And as days pass, the pain increases, and I thought it would fade away. Being away, for me, means just bad things. My path is still determined, I have my plans laid out for the next 1,5 years and after even. Just now I feel lonely, even with my friends, who broke quarantine to see me. Nothing interests me. I don’t feel watching anything, or playing video games, even when I drank or talked to my friends or whatever, I just think of her all the time. So i’m certainly idealizing the relationship but for me sha was golden. I’m not much of a guy for freedom. I miss the texts before going to work, the promise of cuddle the evening, sharing lives with someone, making someone happy, the sex, the affection etc…

Problem is probably that I lost myself into the happiness she was giving me. 2019 was the worst year of my life, and she was the highlight. I forgot to act upon myself, because she was making me so happy. I got lazy it’s true. I would have done everything for her. I spent months barely sleeping because I was working at 6 am on the weekends and still got out with her all the time, for her. I bought her flowers, took her to the restaurant all the time. When we had a weekend together, I sold my guitar to go to Rome with her.

It’s hard because she had became my everything, and I was to her. And in 3 weeks it was over. I am now lonely, and empty, because I had poured too much of myself into her.

So in a week I’m back to my shitty work, and I don’t know how I’ll have the courage this time. Sometimes I want to give up everything. I have dark thoughts. Because honestly I don’t feel much anymore.

Well the sleep, it’s been a solid week. I can’t sleep because I just think of her all the time when I go to bed, or wake up, then I’ll dream of her. And I don’t want to get out of bed because nothing motivates me and I don’t have energy anyway because of the lack of sleep. I can’t even work out. The good thing is that It’s easy to lose weight right now, I don’t feel like eating either.

So I guess it will fade out, and I’ll get better, with time. In the meantime, life is just less interesting, and harder and lonelier. It’s harder to find the motivation to change myself, and do the things I have to do.

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Thinking about her, about moments with her… I shouldn’t be. And I have these physical feelings, like a shard of ice in my heart and I shake. I have so much pain I just want to speak to her, even if it’s pointless, even if I get hurt, to feel something again, to feel her.

It’s stupid. It’s just fucking hormones and stuff… I love her, and I have to wait painfully that this love fades. Probably only really disappearing when meeting another girl.

I feel so angry! Everything is unfair! Why did I was so happy and now it’s over! Why should I keep going hurting like that…